A gas turbine engine typically includes a fan section, a compressor section, a combustor section, and a turbine section. A fan section may drive air along a bypass flowpath while a compressor section may drive air along a core flowpath. In general, during operation, air is pressurized in the compressor section and is mixed with fuel and burned in the combustor section to generate hot combustion gases. The hot combustion gases flow through the turbine section, which extracts energy from the hot combustion gases to power the compressor section and other gas turbine engine loads.
In the combustion section, a casing or “combustor panel” may surround the combustion chamber. The combustor panel may include various cooling features. For example, raised features, such as bumps or pins, may be formed on the radially outward surface of the combustor panel (i.e., on the surface opposite the combustion gas flowpath) to increase a surface area of the radially outward surface and facilitate dissipation of heat from the combustor panel. Cooling holes may also be formed through the combustor panel. Current methods of forming combustor panel cooling holes tend to include laser drilling through the radially inward surface of the combustor panel. However, the desired density of the raised features and diameter of cooling holes tends to cause the laser to strike the raised features. The laser striking the raised features may break off portions of the raised features. These broken off portions may clog the cooling holes and/or travel into the gas flowpath and damage downstream engine components. Further, breaking off the raised features decreases the surface area of the raised feature/combustor panel, which may reduce heat dissipation and increase cooling variability.